Lose Yourself
by JadeRabbyt
Summary: Amity Park is firebombed. How can Danny hide when his town is being burned to the ground? Now finished!
1. I

Lose Yourself

By JadeRabbyt

A/N: Stop. This story was a songfic, but due to regulations and my own fairly acute paranoia I have had to remove the lyrics. Please go here--free hostdepartment com/p/purpledino/storey/ly1 htm (use periods where the spaces are, no www necessary) to read the original. I guarantee it'll knock your socks off.

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom belongs to Nickelodeon.

Part I

Three streaks of exhaust lingered on the sky, staining the virgin blue with their harsh white fumes. Air raid sirens exploded in the air as dust continued to rise just a few blocks away in putrid plumes of fire and dust, the rubble beginning to settle and the first flames beginning to reach skyward. The drone of the planes above as they retreated was a roaring in the heavens that answered the pleading denial of everyone in Amity Park.

We' so far inland. Why should these foreign flags bring destruction here? How is it even possible that this horror is anything more than an illusion or nightmare? I knew I shouldn't have eaten those leftovers. Next time _I_ won't use hard rock as a lullaby.

But the glinting darts overhead would not evaporate no matter how hard the citizens rubbed their eyes or tried to clear their heads, and the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and all their patrons, mothers with infants, the idle unemployed, janitors who'd only gone out to put a bag in the dumpster and students who'd just been let out from school, all stood and stared as those darts, showing their dim luster in the midday sun, arched around for another pass with such calm, mechanical precision as would defy human ability. The roaring faded in the distance until the siren dominated it, whose futile wails soaked the atmosphere, its rising, desperate, sobbing scream echoing the emotions of its audience. The city could only watch, a million eyes as one, the shock transcending all prejudices, political leanings, and mortal concerns as those planes began to return, the siren the only voice in the city still speaking.

The roar was quiet. The planes' thundering could be heard only as a murmur through the siren. The common eye of the town watched as the soaring chunks of platinum above began to birth little dark pellets in midair. They emerged from the planes and hung motionless for an instant against the deep blue backdrop of the sky, but then the pellets began to sink, to grow larger in the view of the city and race toward earth with deadly speed. The belated sonic boom of the planes shattered the siren's crying and the city's amazement as they realized that the explosions of five minutes ago were about to happen again. Everything became a rush, a scream, a Mr. Mayor the President's on the line a Come on Jeremy we have to reach cover a What are you doing Danny they're headed right for us-

Sam yanked hard on his arm, trying to make Danny run from the bombs. A tear fled from one eye as she pulled, but she couldn't do more than throw him off-balance.

"Danny!" she screamed.

"Sam..." he whispered.

Tucker slammed both of them to the ground and as a bomb whistled to earth a short block away, throwing clouds of dirt skyward that boiled up and shrouded the Sun from view. Sam jerked her head up and watched as those caught in the blast roasted in its heat or lay immobile in the street, coughing and writhing before a fog of dirt fell over them that put them out of sight. The three coughed in the cloud, not thick enough to blind but more than thick enough to saturate the air around them. Before the rubble could settle the block was rocked by another low blast that pounded bas on the eardrums. Another wave of heat swept over the three as a fireball reached skyward, releasing the acrid stench of propane. Tucker and Sam hauled Danny to his feet as the smoke boiled away.

He turned to Sam. She was crying. "How?"

Sam shook her head.

Tucker listened as the noise faded. "They're coming around again."

Danny looked up through the dirt and smoke to the sky above to see the three darts turning in the sky, turning back to Amity Park. Danny forced words from his dry mouth. "We need to get somewhere safe."

Tucker looked over the blazing ruins of the block. The fire was already licking at the walls of nearby buildings. "Where?"

Danny finally found his legs and the three of them joined a throng of racing classmates. "Dash!" he shouted. "Where are you guys going?"

The quarterback continued to huff along in his small group of jocks, paying no attention to the lesser students. Sam took up the cry and shouted for his attention.

"Shut up, geek! I don't know! There's nowhere to go. They're destroying everything." He slowed and spared a look for them, a glance of despair and ignorance that washed away pretense. "Do you guys know why?"

"No," the three said as one.

"We can't do anything. We can't _go_ anywhere. There's no air base around that could hope to handle this sort of thing," another jock added.

They raced along the sooty ground, occasionally losing balance but always sprinting forward. They stumbled and tripped on the street's rubble, racing against the planes and dreading the moment their drone once again would silence the siren.

They ran down two and three blocks, leaving the fire a tolerable, if not safe, distance behind. They raced up to a brick building, its windows blown out and electricity down, and leaped through the gaping frame of the display window, tumbling into the store.

Tucker scrambled to his feet. "Basement?"

"Hell yeah," Dash cried. They raced through the abandoned shop, pushing over clothing carts and smearing the merchandise with grime. The group raced to the back, Dash in the lead, and split up without instruction, each searching for a saving staircase.

"Here here!" one of them called.

The group flocked to the speaker and ran down the steps, kicking down a wooden door and flooding into the underground storage area. They paused a moment to catch their breath.

Danny and Sam shoved around some boxes until they could sit together. They held each other, numb and desperate, while Tucker pulled up a nearby carton of clothes and sat a foot away from Danny. He looked between Danny and Sam and pulled out his palm pilot, mindlessly loading a space invaders game with shaking fingers. The jocks huddled in a group, each trying to think of something to say, some explanation or excuse or even a dirty joke that would lighten the mood, but the entire room was struck dumb, letting the siren and the crackling and crashing of fire and the roar of engines cry distress while the group of teenagers cringed underground, struck dumb.

But their silence didn't last long.

"It doesn't... but why... How can they DO this?" Dash jumped from his box and started to pace.

One of his friends stood and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Look, Dash, we're all-"

Dash slapped away the hand. His eyes roamed the room and settled on Danny. "You, Fenton, this is all your fault!" He snatched Danny, who was still having difficulty grasping the absurd accusation, and pinned him against the wall. Sam shouted and Tucker and the jocks leaped to their feet as Dash's hands left Danny's collar and went for the soft flesh at his neck.

Danny gasped, trying to extradite himself from the tightening grip, trying to say something, anything that would quiet his own nascent rage at the disaster as well as Dash's. Surely there was something they could all remember and hold on to-

There was nothing he could say, and Danny started to see stars as the hands at his neck tightened.

The friends of both Danny and Dash tore the thrashing Dash off him, prying his hands loose while he shouted insults and obscenities at Danny. Dash's fellows bore him off to a corner and held him back. They did not say that Danny wasn't worth his time, that the attacks were no fault of Danny's, that there was nothing to be done about it. They pinned him to the wall, silent but for occasional grunts, as Dash punched and thrashed, but gradually his punches lost their force and his voice rose in an unanswerable question. Dash started to sob as the siren wailed and the roar of the planes began to ascend once again. Amity Park continued to burn to the ground, and another volley of explosives was coming to speed it up.

Sam and Danny didn't hear anything. He sank to the floor, arms draped about his knees and Sam crouched next to him, while Tucker stood awkwardly by.

"There was nothing anyone could do," she whispered.

Danny's eyes snapped open. "There is."

"Don't be a dork, Fenton!" Dash shouted. The three turned as he rose from his enclave of supporters and stalked toward them. "Amity Park is gone."

Danny stood. "Not yet."

Tucker cleared his throat. "Danny, I have to agree with Dash. This is way out of our league."

Dash laughed bitterly. "Duh."

In an instant Danny's eyes flashed a bottomless emerald that cast a lime glow over all the basement. Dash stumbled back and Tucker and even Sam stood in astonishment as Danny thrust his fisted hands into the air and the double rings blasted up and down him, leaving him in his pitch-black jumpsuit. He tensed his muscles and lit up his firsts, bringing great orbs of the same brilliant emerald to life.

The green blaze raced up his arms and flowed across his torso, down his legs and up to the crown of his head. As Danny's lips curved in a snarl, his white aura became a jade gem that shone like a beacon in the darkness of the basement.

"I take it back," Tucker murmured.

Danny felt a touch on his chest. Sam was there next to him, the amethyst stones in her own eyes shining their own human plea.

"Danny... don't burn."

He looked into her eyes and his fire flickered less intensely, licking upward less fanatically. He dropped his fists and hissed a sigh.

"Don't burn. Danny, this isn't for you. This is something else. Please don't-"

"Sam." Danny put his hands on her shoulders. "They're trying to kill everyone." They want us all dead, Sam."

Tears ran in streams from her eyes as she collapsed in his arms. Danny kissed her cheek and rested his head in the crook of her neck, his own eyes dry and sad. Sam felt his heart throbbing in great heavy beats as she pressed against him, wanting nothing more than to be alone with him without the shrieks of sirens, just to be near him and not let him do what they both knew he was going to do, what he felt he had to do, and what would probably kill him to do. But she had him for just this instant in time when all the world froze and every slight muscle he tensed or relaxed told her exactly what he was thinking, a crystal moment when there were no words to express her sorrow and regret, just as there were no words to express his fury and determination.

The second passed, the crystal instant shattering with the reverberating explosion of another round of bombs.

He pulled away. "I'm sorry. I have to go."

"Danny wait-"Sam cried as he pulled away from her and blazed off through the ceiling.

"Wait! Come back, Sam!" Tucker shouted. She was already up the steps and out of the shop by the time his echo died off in the basement.

A/N: Not sure how well this style worked out. I was originally planning to do this as a one shot, but that's obviously not happening. This doesn't mean I've given up on "Sing to Life." I've just encountered some technical difficulties with Ch. 4. In the meantime, enjoy this odd little songfic and let me know whatcha think of it!


	2. II

Lose Yourself

By JadeRabbyt

II

Danny raced skyward, phasing through the mortar and brick, plumbing and wiring of the old building and into the smoke-blackened sky above Amity Park. His lungs sucked the bitter, gritty taste of hot smoke, and the corner of his eye caught the sharp glare of flame licking at the buildings below. Danny vaulted into the cindered air, putting all his energy into a single effort: flight, velocity, and acceleration into the hazy void that yawned above his head. The wind tore against his face and a few whispy clouds knelt to touch his cheek as he sped upward and onward, hunting the ambivalent predators ahead. They spooled out thick ivory strings of exhaust behind them, flying level and smooth along the currents of the air, piercing the wind with rod-tipped nostrums. They maneuvered with casual indifference at speeds it was taking Danny superhuman effort to even attain.

Danny squinted into the wind, the corner of one lip twitching down. He didn't care how they looked. They'd be caught. And they'd be destroyed.

His conscious mind began to fade out.

The words and the forced actions, the fury and rage and determination and every other product of his conscious mind was purified into the needle-sharp awareness and instantaneous reaction times possible only through desperate instinct. Every current of the air, every explosion that touched his ears and every burning building below was marked and given its true meaning, all objects in his existence reduced to their purest essence and subsequence in the context of this moment. Irrelevancies were obliterated while things with purpose were caught and stored, prized and categorized with meticulous precision to be used in minute trajectory alterations that would close the gap between Danny and the attackers that much sooner.

The wind whipping petulantly at his hair was marked down as inhibiting friction, and Danny straightened his body to reduce it. The icy cold that bit through his suit was merely an inconvenience to be ignored. The aloof planes turned to prey and their fumes to the trail as the crackle of plaster and wood below counted down the time, urging him on. The town and the siren and the burning heat of the chaos below cried rage, and the smoke rose as a plea.

As reality registered again and again Danny Phantom cleaved the air as a bolt of verdant lightning and began to catch up to the planes.

He soared over their white tails, watching the steely little death machines as they cut through the grainy sky. Unbidden, a lime glow began to concentrate about Danny's outstretched fists, thickening the boiling green energy already surrounding him. These new clouds were the familiar progenitors of his plasma beams, but Danny didn't know where he was getting the energy required to produce them. The natural spectral power had been scraped clean from him, collected and converted into speed. This new power had not the soft tingle of his typical ectoplasm but the sharp, poisoned touch of something else, something eternal and unnatural that oozed from twin sources in his heart and brain. The forbidden power surged through his arms to his knuckles, flowing through his mind with the electrical hum of high-voltage lines and leaving in its wake the stinging numbness of electrocution. He was dimly aware that he was charging a plasma beam with more energy than he'd ever concentrated in his short life as a phantom.

Danny was coming up fast on the planes but they were coming up faster on the city. He siphoned off more of that precious power and flew faster, coming into range, being in range. He measured his targets through the sparking green haze around his fists. They were coming up on the suburbs, fingers probably already poised on those buttons that would open the bomb bay doors.

Danny tracked the leftmost plane, catching every twitch of the rudders and flinch of its ailerons. It angled right, nosing closer to tighten the pattern one final time before the three separated to chase their own targets. Danny's plane drifted north, towards the giants of aging brick and modern steel that towered over the once-bustling streets of downtown Amity.

A final great charge of power surged up his arms, blasting the twin spheres of plasma forward and sending a bone-wrenching jerk through Danny as its kickback crushed him against his former momentum.

The two great clouds smeared against the plane's wings and exploded. The fuselage flew naked, wings obliterated but for a few tattered metal ribbons. The plane twitched left sky as the jade energy washed over it, yet it continued on a straight path with preternatural resolution for the fraction of a second it took the sweeping, spitting, sparking emerald energy to whisper against the fuel tank. The plane exploded in an umber detonation, hanging and growing in the air like an orange stain in the blackened sky. The fiery debris lingered for a moment as the booming explosion stretched to its full size, incinerating itself a moment later, leaving behind only a few choice fragments of its origins. Strips of metal drifted to earth and a cloud of smoke added itself to a larger fog of the same.

He'd done it.

Danny watched the explosion peter out, watched the other two planes begin to clover-leaf. His harried eyes flickered across their city, searching for some fresh blossom of fire left by those two, but there was none. He stared dumbly at downtown Amity. The streets had long since emptied, cars abandoned and wads of trash littered across the street from the urgency of the evacuation. An errant minivan had smashed up against a fire hydrant.

The broken fixture spewed a fountain of the clearest, purest water in existence straight up in the sky for thirty feet or more. It reached up and up, tiny droplets falling to speckle the tinted windows and lemon paint of the minivan, the runoff rushing in burbling rivulets across the tarmac. The main spray thickened as it stretched higher, making one last leap to the heavens before curving back to earth in a great wide shower that sparkled up to Danny from the ground.

The exhilaration, the raw taste of victory, was soured by the fires below, still raging with heat and anger. His mind was throbbing from the recent use of that power, the ache of a wound numbed but still pouring precious blood. The planes were coming back to shoot him, he had no idea how to out the fire, and then there was something else. Something he couldn't face that he'd done in blowing up that plane. It numbed him, confused him, and saddened him, none of which could help him save the town. So Danny ignored it.

Through the doubts, Danny could still see that arc of glistening water, the single sign of life in downtown. He had kept it there.

Something else was still down there too, at least partially because of his efforts. Danny could see a feminine figure in a black tank top gazing up at him from a couple blocks over. Even from his great height Danny could see her slim arms crossed and squeezed tight against her chest, waiting for him to come back to her.

Danny heaved a shaky sigh. Sam didn't understand, or perhaps she understood too well. I'm doing this for you, Sam, for me and for us and for everybody below. Look, you have been with me from the beginning, from the very first. I've spent so much work, spent so much time and energy and put up with so much crap just to protect us and everything that's good here. My parents don't trust me. My grades are worse than election results. I'm unpopular and creepy and totally alienated from just about everybody with these powers, and now there's some planes, some little metal triangles in the sky that are telling me that it's for nothing. Sorry Danny, they're saying, Game over. We don't care what you've given of yourself. It doesn't matter. We'll burn you all.

I'm sorry, Sam. I can't give it up to them. You were right. This is probably gonna kill me, but I can't give it up.

A/N: I'm glad you guys like this! (Couldn't make the lyrics clump in this chapter. Let me know if anybody knows how.) Thanks all for your reviews: Mujitsu Yume, soccergurl1990, Angels624, prncssGrl1881, Mrs. Granger-Weasley, Chibi Fluffy Muffin, autumngold, Lightning Streak, and ?. Questions will remain unanswered, not because I am an evil demon-spawn but because I think it really adds more to the story if some things are left for you to determine. Sincere thanks to Lightning Streak for her criticism. (Was the description better this time? If not, can you tell me specifically what could be improved?) More coming soon!


	3. III

Lose Yourself

By JadeRabbyt

III

Danny tore his gaze away, fists clenched and eyes narrowed into the wind. Smoke wreathed the buildings a couple blocks over, lingering over the roofs before rising up to smear itself across the heavens above. Through the grey murk ran three streaks of white exhaust, one stopping short some distance away from Danny, the others running past and away from him. They stretched off into the distance like railroad tracks: always parallel, never wavering, distorted only by a faint breath of wind. They skirted the sky, running out and away for miles only to cut back suddenly, dashing back so rapidly to head straight for Danny. The white streaks became the tails of two grey metal toys whose whine began to rise, whose roar became an irrepressible thunder as they hurtled toward him.

Danny lit his fists with familiar plasma, bringing two healthy orbs to life as the planes closed the distance. His hands shook as the seconds slipped away, the planes speeding forward, their figures resolving ever clearer as each passing second revealed new details of the planes' construction. The thin needle spiking out from the nostrum. The gunmetal grey of the hull. The blood-colored tips of those tubes beneath the wings and the tiny movements of the shadowed pilots. Danny braced himself as he tapped his other resource once more, feeling the sting bite into his brain as the power flowed again. Again it pulsed into his fists, swallowing the tamer energy and snapping between his fingers in electrical sparks. Somewhere a voice protested, asking if its price was acceptable for a freshman for a veteran even for a general, if perhaps there was something wrong with a world where this was possible

but itwas swept away, destroyed and cast out by the pain in his mind and the duty at hand.

Danny tracked the plane on the right, molding and enlarging the charges, making consciousness subservient to instinct once more. They were so close now. The whine escalated to a shrill screech that trembled the air. Ailerons, metal plating, the dark humanoid blur in the cockpit-all grew colossal as the air was pierced by a new sound, and Danny's eyes widened but it was only the sharp rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of metal slugs passing straight through his chest, threading his ghostly body with focused vortices of thin, dirty air while the planes split his eardrums with their guns but now They were heading right at him They were on either side of him and HehadtodosomethingNOW!

Danny thrust out his fists and sent the two deadly blasts ripping away from him and hurtling toward the rightmost plane. He gasped as the kickback tumbled him head-over-heels, throwing up his hands to shield himself from the imminent blast, from the inevitable explosion that was a little too long in coming.

Danny regained his balance and spun upright, eyes darting from one lugubrious smoke cloud to another. His brilliant energy spheres vanished in the distance. Not a flicker of an explosion or shard of wreckage met his sight. The exhaust streaks ran straight past him; the two had swerved around him.

Danny whirled just in time to see the two jets drop four bombs.

Already the bombs were some distance away from him, carried far beyond easy reach by the momentum of the planes. The bombs traced a sharp arch as gravity caught hold of them. Narrow guidance tailfins held the bombs balanced as their rockets sputtered to life, spurring the bombs onward to target the most vulnerable areas of the city. But long before the rockets fired, during the first wavering moments when the clasps had released the bombs and gravity reached up with long fingers to pull them earthward, Danny had turned and plunged after them, tearing through the smoke and wind as the touch of gravity worked with his own powers of flight.

The emerald fire around him stretched behind like the tail of a comet. That strange power had once flowed in exact, if painful, channels in his blood; now it tore through him like fire as he raced with the speed of angels and demons after the glinting bombs. The smoke stung his eyes as the energy pulsed to his fists, and Danny grew nearer to the bombs even as they grew nearer to the city below, thoughts like water cascading in his mind.

Arms outstretched and hands thrust forward now Fire! and there go two green spheres for four grey bombs, the green spinning after them (a hit!) and now there are two orange flares and only two more bombs. Quick now more power just one more blast (oh god this hurts) and then four orange flares, all over the city, and the sky is filled with heat and smoke and there is nothing left to see or feel but only a long fall, fall from the sky struggling for sight for flight for enough power to remain only half ghost.

Through the sky, dropping out of consciousness, a green flare against the dark residue of the recently exploded bombs.

Tucker shaded his brow, muscled tensed and eyes desperate. The hero who always was, the freshman who never was, now there he was falling from the sky. Tucker clenched the loose strap of his backpack, turning to watch the screeching jets shoot away behind a concrete edifice. When they found out who did this, who was responsible… Well, the guilty party would end up experiencing some serious technical difficulties. Tucker would kick up every virus and trojan in his arsenal to go after these guys. But what paltry retribution that would be for all this. For the ruins of the city, for the lives of the dead, for whatever Danny was forcing himself to do.

Danny still plunged earthward, and Tucker's mouth fell open as the emerald fire around his friend split for a moment, allowing two circles of white to run over him before winking out and leaving that same green. Tucker examined the buildings as Danny fell behind them, marking them carefully in memory. He scrambled for his palm pilot and its navigation program, fumbling for a moment before shoving it back in his pocket. He didn't have the patience right now. He had seen where Danny had fallen; it would be better to just go and find him.

Or what was left of him.

What was left of him? What was that supposed to mean? Tucker had no idea what was going on. His best friend was trying to save the city from who, terrorists? China? Some little dirtball middle eastern country or bad-tempered extremists or what, exactly? But at the end of this nightmare, would the name of the enemy really matter? Tomorrow morning, would any of it matter to the dead? Tucker didn't know. He groaned and gave his head a single shake before turning away and sprinting down the road. He wasn't a philosopher, he was a best friend, and that was one job he knew how to do. Tucker raced away down the concrete, the metal instruments clattering in his backpack as they jostled one another.

Sam jerked to a stop at the corner of the block, her breath freezing in her throat. One more corner to turn, one more sight to see, then she'd know what was left for her to do. One more corner to turn, but her feet wouldn't do it. She kept seeing his face, his laughing face, with those dancing blue eyes and the shock of hair that fell so garishly over his forehead. She loved those jokes he'd crack, even if they weren't always very clever, and his rare hope, that precious attitude which led him to attempt what others could not conceive and the absence of which she felt so painfully in herself. Sam squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a fresh hot stream run down her cheeks, leaning weakly against a newspaper stand.

"Just let him be alive." She raised her eyes to the filthy sky above. "Just alive." The clouds of smoke glared back at her, darkened and angered by the recent explosions, mixing and pulsing with new currents. They were no help. Sam took a breath and, setting her jaw, stepped out beyond the corner. There was that tall beige office building, here was the squat apartment complex she had seen from a couple blocks back. But where was-

Danny!

Sam laughed, clasping her arms to her chest and turning her face to the sky in smiling gratitude. Ahead of her a storm drain boiled thick white clouds of steam. Nothing unnatural littered the streets, only the standard amount of garbage and the nervous feet of onlookers, and there was the storm drain before her boiling up reassurance that she hadn't lost her love quite yet.

She hardly noticed the rubber-necking morons gathered around the drain, but she saw that one of them had at least been decent enough to bring a crowbar. Sam snatched it away from him, breathing a pardon. The bovine gathering grumbled in protest but let her start on the drain, watching her closely as she knelt to the grating. The steam knitted itself around the crowbar as she jammed it in, the white vapor running between her fingers and scorching her hands. Sam gasped and sat back hard and the crowbar twanged in the grating, stuck like a blackened toothpick between the grungy metal bars.

"Easy, Sam." She jumped as a tentative hand rested itself on her shoulder, her eyes flashing as she turned on its owner.

There was Tucker, standing just beside her. He tensed under her scowl but he didn't move. Her eyes darted between his nervous face and his presumptuous hand, then she nodded and lowered her head. The hand could stay. Sam took a deep, rapid breath and waved to the grate, voice cracked and staggered in her own ears. "He fell… but the crowbar…" She groaned and threw up her hands. "The steam won't let us in."

Tucker nodded down at her. "Yeah. I see." She leaned back against his leg, shaking her burned hands in the cool air. Sam tried to slow her breathing, trying not to think about Danny down there in the sewers. The planes could yet be heard above the scream of the siren, and rumbled explosions and splintering of wood echoed from the inferno a couple blocks over. The steam hissed past the bars while people argued and shouted nearby, and Sam blushed to find herself wishing for silence. A silence of everything where she could just be allowed to rest from all this, the planes, the fire, the explosions and the chase, everything. She pulled her knees to her chest and hid her face in her hands.

A stranger, Sam thought it might have been the one who'd brought the crowbar, started to ask about them, about Sam, about what it was that was boiling away in the storm drain. Sam clenched her teeth and let Tucker handle it.

"Just get started on the grating. There's somebody down there we've gotta get out." The man stared at him for a moment before turning back to the other gawkers. Tucker looked after him, waiting for them to start before turning to Sam with a forged smile. "At least he must have managed to change back in time. He's probably fine." Sam returned his edgy smile with a sad grin of her own.

She stood up, brushing the dirt away with beleaguered strokes. "I guess." She folded her arms, watching the group bumble helplessly about the grate. The steam continued to billow skyward, hiding the tunnel below and its powerful occupant. "How hot…" She gulped and started again, grasping at words. "What would be…" Sam lifted her head and met Tucker's eyes. He wrestled with the same question. Tucker opened his mouth and looked down, closed it again, looked at her and at the drain behind her. She watched him, wanting him to deny what she had seen in the basement, that martyring flame that had so consumed the friend she loved. Maybe it was a noble cause, but what justifies suicide?

What right did Danny have to exterminate himself for a city of shallow, ungrateful jerks who almost deserved to be eradicated for the idiots they were, for the independent thought they lacked? Sam's arms trembled in the heat of the steam only a couple feet away.

Tucker shifted his feet. "They've got the drain open."

"But how are we going to-"

Tucker beamed, a bright glint in his eyes. "Thought you'd never ask. Wait here." He rushed over to an evacuated shop and thrust open the door. It was a real estate agency with wide glass windows, bordered on the sides by heavy grey curtains. She watched Tucker rummage in the secretary's desk and leap away from it with a pair of scissors, moving to the curtains. He cut them down with a proud flourish and rushed outside.

Tucker began slicing the curtains into thinner strips, running the scissors through the thick fabric, ripping and tearing it furiously. Sam grinned, putting a hand to her mouth as he worked. Tucker finished with one of the curtains and tossed her a couple of long, wide scraps.

"If there's one thing I'm good at, it's problem solving. Tie these around your head and arms. It'll protect us from the steam."

Moments later, the two of them stood over the grate, heavily blanketed in the dusty fabric. Sam looked down into the dark, recalling all the time she had Danny had spent together, all the time they had laughed and joked about some ridiculous school event or a particularly blunt villain. She remembered the curve of his smile and their last touch, down in that dirty clothing-store cellar.

"You coming?" The hiss of the steam nearly drowned out Tucker's voice. Sam looked down as Tucker disappeared into the drain. She dropped her legs into the hole, sitting on the edge, feeling the heat of the steam through her leggings before scootching off the pavement and into the drain, into the haunted obscurity of the billowing white steam.

A/N: Revision of III completed with critique from Liaranne. Hope this clears things up a bit for you guys. II's reviewers are thanked profusely: panda13, Creator-Chaos, D/Sfan, soccergurl1990, Sakura Scout, Angels624, Necromacer Anonymous, Liaranne, Mujitsu Yume, prncssGrl1881, and Mrs. Granger-Weasley.


	4. IV

A/N: Man, is it ever great to be writing again! W00t! Anyway, if you were confused by III, you might want to go back and take another look at it. Liaranne gave me some good feedback, and as of 12/20/04, there's a revised version of III up.

Lose Yourself

By JadeRabbyt

IV

It was track day. The sun shone bright and hot, and the powdered sand crunched softly under the students' tennis shoes. Danny, Tucker, Sam, Paullina, and Gordon all puttered around the finish line, each chatting with his or her respective cliques and griping about the mile. Gordon told Paullina that he liked the mile run, that it was a 'good test of strength' and 'really separated out the weaklings.' Meaning himself, Danny thought. He wished that he had the muscles to brag. If was on a sports team like baseball or something, then Paullina would have no problem going with him. Paullina always chose jocks for boyfriends.

Sam and Tucker noticed his brooding and quickly brought him back to the crucial subject of how awful this whole nonstop-mile-run thing was. Danny agreed that it was indeed awful and added that their teacher must crazy. He cringed when the teacher spoke up from behind him, warning him to watch his mouth. He blew the whistle for the students to line up, dispensing the obligatory threats and demeaning comments, It was only a mile you should be in good enough shape do it or you have detention blah blah blah.

Gordon prepared, showcasing for Paullina his 'ready' stance, left leg bent forward, right leg stretched out in back, hands planted confidently in the dirt. The rest of the class merely tensed for the whistle, and when its shrill tweet sounded they were off. Most kids started slow; they had to beat twelve minutes, but they weren't about to put any more effort than was necessary into it. Danny watched Gordon run ahead and realized that Gordon wasn't actually very fast at all. It just looked that way because everybody else was dragging their feet.

Danny thought about this as he jogged beside Tucker, watching Gordon pull ahead. Gordon was the latest bully in a long line of bullies to cross his path, and Danny thought about the trashings and the insults and the general public humiliation, and he decided that he was sick of it. He turned and told Tucker that he was going to try for a better time. Tucker nodded, waving him on. Danny picked up his feet and set his sights on Gordon. Maybe the strong ruled the earth, but after years of running away, the weak had pretty strong legs.

The runners passed and were passed by one another as the race wore on. One out of four laps completed, and Danny drew closer to Gordon. Laps two and three went by, and both of them slackened a little, but still Danny gained. By the fourth lap, Danny had victory within his grasp.

Gordon ran a little ahead of him, maybe a quarter of a track-length. Danny breathed hard, preparing his legs for last stretch of the mile, slowing a little, building adrenaline in his calves before cutting loose, sprinting ahead while his feat pounded like pistons. Though fuzzy, jolted vision he saw Gordon glance over his shoulder and pick up his own pace, the two of them breaking even as Danny reached him. Gordon huffed and puffed in near panic as Danny struggled beside him, and Gordon burst forward with the extra edge six years of sports had given him. Danny's legs began to give, beginning to wobble and shake as the adrenaline ran dry, but he kept running, kept pouring his will into them until a heavy set of mental gears turned. They groaned to life with a clang of iron and screech of disuse, picked up speed and turned faster as the rust ground away, and then the effort of motion shifted from the fibers in his legs to those gears in his head.

Danny ran and the gears whirled and Gordon choked for air. The finish line flew up the track to meet them as the gym teacher waved them on and Danny leaped, legs straddling the finish line in midair, sensing Gordon behind, and as he touched down, something at once obvious and supernatural became apparent to him. It consisted so much of both that he dismissed it soon afterwards as naïve and irrational, but for all that he held against it, he never quite forgot what he thought in that instant when he beat Gordon. When you run in desperation, speed is aided by temporary fear, but when you run with purpose, it is courage and measureless will that drives you. He didn't know what that meant, but it sounded high and noble and right, in perfect harmony with what he'd just managed. Around him the class was approving, cheering, and roaring for him. A hiss sneaked through his ears, and the ground felt wet. Danny stirred and opened his eyes.

Sam heard a weak cough in the dark as the heat bit into her clothes. The steam tore upwards in the darkness, scalding hot on her stomach as it rushed past her into the sky. She crouched down next to Tucker, squatting on the floor of the drain and below the hot rush, a thin current burbling past their shoes. The pitch black around them held solid everywhere, broken only by a colored blob a short distance away, a greenish smudge underlined in red. Sam pointed it out to Tucker, who nodded his recognition, and the two of them crept forward.

The steam rose from the color, and the color was a prostrate freshman. The green shifted and the red dimmed as he rolled to his side and managed to push himself into a half-crouch, limbs shaking as he teetered in the dark, still radiating that strange green glow that sparkled in the darkness. The steam lessened considerably-the humid air grew clearer-and a larger current swept past Sam's feet as the figure managed to draw himself from the water. She cringed as he managed to stand, arms held out for balance that lasted a short second before he collapsed heavily against the wall, mouth parted and breath shallow. Sam twitched forward but Tucker grabbed her back. She protested and struggled in his arms, her voice small through the hiss of steam. Tucker held tight, begging her to look again. Sam squinted closer at the color and froze, tearing hands poised motionless on Tucker's restraining arm.

Danny was leaning against the solid concrete wall of the drain, arms pressed tight against it. The green flowed around him as a disorderly vapor that made his suit look wrinkled and dirty; his hair hung disheveled and tired about his head. The red glow had returned at his back and feet, glowing brighter and spreading as Sam watched it creep along the wall wherever Danny's body touched it. The tips of his elbows sank in as the concrete softened to embrace him, and the dirty water boiled furiously from the red spot at his feet. Through the thick haze and steam and dim red glow, Sam could see Danny's haggard face. He gasped and shuddered in turns, moving his hand from the wall to wipe it across his forehead or massage his legs. He coughed and gave his head a quick shake, losing his balance for a moment. Sam pulled against Tucker again, but Danny caught himself against the wall.

"Hey Sam. Tuck."

They jumped at his scratchy voice, cringing as though caught at something dirty.

Danny lifted his head to smile at them. "It's good to see you guys." His countenance lay somewhere between earth and elsewhere. His eyes were heavy and sad, his smile authentic and wistful. It pierced Sam's heavy heart like a lance.

She managed a smile for him, but her voice shook. "It's good to see you, too."

Tucker stuttered, shifting his gaze from Danny's weakness. "Good work, Danny," he mumbled. He waved to the pipe around them, vaguely encompassing the sky in the gesture. "Is there anything we can do to um, help?"

"Not this time," Danny sighed. He rubbed his temples and slunk down the wall, letting his head drop. A sigh, and a quiet whisper: "I'm going to miss you guys."

Sam's brows shot up. She tried to keep her voice steady. "What are you talking about? You can barely move. You have to stay here" _With me._

Danny gazed back at her. His eyes shone emerald, but not the emerald fire Sam had seen back at the clothing shop. These eyes were emerald stones, the power of the fire locked in a solid matrix, understood and controlled. "No," he said. "It's okay. See, I know what I can do now." Danny stood, and his legs did not quiver. "It's really going to be okay. Let me show you."

He looked away from them, staring into the opposite wall. The green light around his body flickered into a stronger flame as the red-hot wall around him began to sag. Danny straightened and moved away from it, closing his eyes and tensing his arms, his steps strong and firm. Brighter grew the flame around him; more intense the red glow at his feet. The fire flared and flowed from him to lick the low ceiling and swim in the boiling water as Danny himself stood with furrowed brow and fisted hands. He was a torch of the sewers, eyes squeezed shut and body held stonily rigid, but then as Sam and Tucker watched his arms swept up to cross his chest as his knees bent in a battle stance that pulled the wild flames in around him, whipping them around his body in a whirling ball that boiled water by the gallon and made the walls blush: but now a pause of motion, a slight frown of effort, and Danny flung his arms out to the air with fingers distended and emerald eyes opened wide to the world as the sphere around him erupted in a torrential blast of jade energy. Tucker grunted and Sam spun away but the green rushed past them, whipping at their clothes and blasting down the tunnels while Danny stood in the midst of it, white hair ruffling as if in a breeze.

Sam brought her arms down in the sea of blinding green. She grasped for Tucker and caught his wrist, feeling Tucker cover her hand with his own. The green spoke to them.

Don't worry, she heard. It won't hurt either of you.

Tucker's voice: "What is this?"

It's me.

There was a silence. Sam waved her hand through the green, but somehow it didn't burn. There was a pleasant warmth, but no burn, and the energy, wild and unbeatable though it was, reminded her of Danny when he laughed. She didn't understand.

It's me, Tucker.

Tucker didn't say anything for a moment. Sam couldn't imagine what this was like for him, but when Tucker did at last speak, it was with only the faintest waver.

"I'll miss you, Danny. I'll tell everyone about you. I'll let them know what you did, and not just this, either." Tucker's voice came stronger. "I'll tell them how many times you saved their butts and they didn't even know it. This isn't going to be like the other times, when you just do your hero thing and nobody ever…" He heaved a sigh. "You know, we had some fun together."

I know.

"We could always… You were always…" Sam heard him sniff. "I'm not going to forget."

"You can't do this Danny," she whispered. "You can't waste yourself for this. It's terrible, but I stand by what I said before. This isn't your fight."

It is, though. What are all the other fights worth if I lose this one?

"It's worth _us_!" she shouted. "You can't do this."

Sam Sam Sam…

The green closed around her, passing over her shoulders and lighting on her face. Sam leaned her head into it and reached in futility for some solid part of him to touch. "You can't do this." She didn't care if she was crying. "I'm not going to let you."

Sam, I love you and I want you to understand what I'm doing. I need you to understand what I'm doing, because in a way that's what this is all about. It's about you, and us, and the way we... The way people can…

Words failed him. Sam could almost feel his arms around her.

They can't be allowed to destroy us, Sam, or anybody else who feels the way I do about someone like you. It's not right. It's… it's obscene that they think they can. I have to leave now, before they come back. Can you see that? Can I have your forgiveness for this?

Sam barked a laugh like a cry and grinned for him. "You know you've always had that." She rubbed her eyes. "I guess I know I can't keep you here, and if you have to go out I guess this is the best way to do it. Not many better ways to die than in saving a few thousands." She laughed again, and the green lightened apologetically around her. "You can bet I'm not happy about this, but I do understand, or I will eventually."

Thank you, Sam.

She brought her head up sharply. "I'm not finished. I've got something for you to understand. I love you, and it's not right that you have to do this." She put her hands to her sides. "If it's right for you to save the anonymous masses, then it's right for me to save you. Danny, when you come down I'm going to be there, and that's something I'll promise."

Tucker remained tactfully silent. The green around Sam lifted a bit.

Thank you. Sam, I don't want this either. I want to be here with you. When this is over, I want to be there with you, but I don't think… this energy is…

A finger touched her cheek. Sam nuzzled the phantom limb, feeling its light caress move down to stop at the line of her jaw.

I love you, Sam.

She wondered if her eyes would ever dry. "I love you too."

Danny hovered around them before speaking Goodbye, and the green moved again, sweeping past the two of them and through the storm drain above in a hurricane wind that left the tunnel vacant and cold.

A/N: My reviewers continue to earn my gratitude: kiddette, Creator-Chaos, Mrs. Granger-Weasley, Liaranne, Raven of Fear, and prncssGrl1881. V is the final chapter, and it will be up sooner than you think. Don't forget to drop me a review!


	5. V

A/N: Sorry for the wait. Enjoy, and thanks for all your support.

Lose Yourself

By JadeRabbyt

V

Danny felt light. He should be scared; he should be terrified; he should be thinking about everything he would never do again. All the people he would never see again, Sam and Tucker and Jazz and his parents. He should be worried; he should be terrified.

But he wasn't. Danny rocketed into the sky, his material body recondensing as he rose through the smoking heavens.

Whenever Danny thought of his parents, his friends, his school, all he could see were memories, thousands of recorded films that played and played again behind his eyes. He drifted up in the sky, far above the people and the smoldering buildings with only murderers for company, but he also walked in Casper's halls, ate cereal at the Fenton table.

Memories of crystal clarity arose in vibrant life, more real than ever before. The understanding shine on his mother's ruby lipstick when she smiled at another one of Dad's mess-ups; the way Jazz's eyes flashed when she found some crazy new psychological idea to ponder and his dad... Danny smiled. Dad was a library of stumblings, explosions, and brightly grinning enthusiasm.

School, Sam, and Tucker all seemed at once closer and more distant. Family memories were etched in concrete; those of his friends were written on the wind: more alive and less solid, vivid and evanescent. Tucker rushing forward time after time with that thermos, the thick hum as he spun off the cap and the quick white flash as its magnetism captured and contained the ghost of the day. He and Tucker in the movie arcade, bundled tense and alert as they gripped their plastic handguns and clicked harmless triggers at harmless enemies while Sam leaned against the coin-dispenser, the light from their virtual explosions rippling softly across her black top as she rolled her eyes and wondered aloud when they'd be done.

Through a shield of spotless glass Danny watched the memories. They were his, and nothing anybody could do to him would change that.

High in a chill-stricken sky, Danny watched Sam shouting advice to him over the clamor of an unfolding ghost battle, her expression fierce with concern and eagerness for action, her body running and then twitching away, its motions subconsciously synchronized with Danny's own as he dodged and struck out at the ghost. At school now, Sam stopped him in the hallway to describe her latest cause, pressing a couple of anti-frog dissection buttons into his palm, a warmth on his hand as her fingers dallied too long, and the hot blush they shared in subsequence.

Danny shook his head, shaking the memories away. The planes were coming and he needed to focus, but somehow his eyes were tearing up. He could leave his parents and his school and even Tucker, but Sam was his only If Only, and he couldn't let her memory go.

So Danny kept her. He grasped his last memory of her down in the sewers, promising with her heart's words that she'd be there when he fell. He kept her tears and her smile, her disheveled hair and her earnest, desperate eyes, her willingness to care enough about him that she'd let the city burn before watching him die. Danny let himself slide into the fantasy that she really would be there for him when he was finished being there for everybody else, and that, through some miracle of will or love, she would be able to save him.

The planes were coming. Their angry, tinny clamor reached him from a distance as they sped toward him.

Danny felt the energy gathering and the ethereal sting in his hands and head and heart as the vibrant power flowed. The planes tore toward him, their metal shining under the clouded Sun and their terrific engines roaring louder in the atmosphere. Below him the town smoked; Danny could almost hear the fireman's sirens.

He could almost hear the people talking, hear the TVs babbling and the dogs barking and the kids at school laughing.

The power surged into his hands. It rushed into his palms to form a charge, a small, shining green ball of ectoplasm that took its form and grew from wispy rivulets streaming from his fingertips. The sphere floated between his hands with the heaviness of lead and the vibrancy of a thunderbolt. Danny flexed his hands, molding the power.

Star-shaped flashes erupted from the jets' wings as a noise like sandpaper on gravel nipped at his ears. The planes were shooting at him again, but Danny hardly noticed it. He watched the crafts move as they weaved and dodged, iron hawks after an errant blackbird. They thought they had him, but they were wrong. Danny wound up his arms, lugging the charge to his side before thrusting it forward, opening his hands and letting the blast tear forth.

The power whirled through the air, spiraling out from Danny and widening into a funnel of raw power that split the azure heavens. The sky sparked lightning and the air stank of ozone; the piercing light sliced the city with geometric shadows. People clapped terrified hands to splitting ears and hid their faces from the ethereal heat, neither effect damaging, both effects terrifying.

The funnel dwindled and vanished over the horizon, the sun returned its soft white shine, and there was a little dusty smudge where one of the planes used to be.

The surviving plane peeled off and began a spastic series of twisting evasions. Danny shook off encroaching fatigue and dashed after it.

The plane jolted up and down and side to side as it made its desperate way across the sky. Danny matched it move for move, turn for turn. Keeping up was no trouble anymore; the trick would be to find a good shot. He didn't have much power left, but he had enough, maybe even enough to make it back to Sam. Danny curved his body in accordance with the plane's movements, altering his momentum to keep right on it; he tried to accelerate and found that he couldn't. It took too much energy. He'd have to take the shot from where he was.

Danny pursed his lips in the wind and pulled another charge, forcing more power through his arms and waiting for the plane to relax its twisting defenses.

The jet jerked up once, curved back down, and flew level in the sky, straight as an arrow. Danny threw the charge forward, igniting the air electrically once more. The charge hurtled forward, widened with the same terrible force as before…

And missed. The plane jerked up, the power just missing the bottom of its fuselage. Fighting the sinking feeling in his stomach, Danny raced up after it, chasing the jet up above the cloudcover and high above the smoke, above the cold aroma of wood and into thin, scentless atmosphere. The plane flew up, and Danny chased after it, gathering another charge for one more shot. The Sun's piercing glare shot through his eyes; the space above glimmered depthless sapphire. Danny kept the next charge between his palms, carefully avoiding the question of how much power he had left.

He lined up the shot and sent the beam flying up, but the plane must have seen it coming. It looped and dropped away, sinking into a shaky descent as the beam curled past it into space. Unbalanced by its sudden plunge, the plane spun tail-over-wing before catching itself, regaining control, and continuing down into thicker atmosphere. Danny pointed himself earthward and let himself fall, allowing gravity do the bulk of the work. He waited for the plane to act, for the ailerons to tilt and the plane to level out or shoot up, ready to speed after it the moment it stopped descending. He frowned as the plane continued on its downward course.

They couldn't, Danny thought. It wouldn't…

But it was. The plane dove toward the ground, wings screaming against the air, and the city lay thick beneath it.

Danny kicked his energy to life, a rush of hot wind sweeping aside his bangs as the green fire around him ignited in a hot burst of panic, a shock of pain striking through his mind. Brushing off the lightheadedness Danny shoved his fists forward and dove down after the plane. The city was a long way down—he could do this, he still had time. One good blast would do it, but he'd have to aim well. If he missed, the city would catch it.

The smoke flew up in his eyes. Danny rubbed them clear and squinted, awaiting the internal sting that signaled the charge's accumulation, but a second passed and he didn't feel anything. Danny flexed his fists and tried again, but he couldn't do it. Not enough power left.

As Danny started to feel his first real panic, another memory floated to the surface of his consciousness. Ready to dismiss it out-of-hand, Danny let it stay when he realized what it was. A long-ago race against some random bully, a time when, technically and physically, he really shouldn't have been able to win then, either.

Danny glanced ahead at the plane and gritted his teeth. He bunched his feet under him and dove down, plunging earthward, feeling the fire dwindling and his mind fading. The memory flitted away, but its effect remained in force. Focus was difficult; concentration impossible. Everything left went into speed. Danny dropped one hand to his side—less friction that way—and stretched out the other, palm open, reaching for the plane.

The plane loomed ahead, it and Danny all but motionless in space. Danny inched forward as the wind crashed by his ears and across his face, the ground rushing up to meet them, the streets growing wider and the buildings getting larger, small imprinted squares shining white and turning to windows as thread-thin lines became penciled traffic medians.

So close. Danny could see the people in the street and the plating on the jet with equal clarity. Its engines belched scalding steam and smoke in his face, the heat sending the air into chaos and threatening to throw him off the trail. Danny stretched out his hand. Just a foot or two more…

Danny thought of Sam.

He reached out his hand, stretching himself into infinity and oblivion to grasp the hot metal in his fingers. The emerald fire around him shrank to a flicker and returned an instant later as a tremendous conflagration that raced up the plane, melted the metal and swallowing the craft in a thick explosion of crunching fiberglass and erupting fuel cells.

Sam…

Danny felt a blast of heat and light as his world imploded and his mind fell to tatters about him, but then he felt nothing at all.

The blacktop flew away under Sam's pounding feet, Tucker left behind long ago through the flurries of people and turns of the streets. She had seen Danny fall, seen him drop like a stone from the sky as bolts of green, residual from the explosion, had wreathed him, sparking and flashing, dissipating, and slowly fading away as he had fallen down among the buildings.

Sam's fists flew at her side as she pushed herself forward, poisonous thoughts striking like vipers whenever she lost track of her purpose. Danny may already be dead. He might hate you for being reluctant, for trying to keep him back. He might think you're a loose tramp for trying to stop him from doing something that has helped so many.

The buildings passed her in blurs of brick and glass, the doubts needling but not weakening, worrying but not shaking her from her promise to be there. She paid no mind to those few who tried to stop her, people who saw a desperate girl with soiled clothes running through the streets. One or two called for her to stop, to offer help, to ask what might be wrong, but Sam didn't stop. She heard them like a buzzing in her ears as she raced after Danny.

She couldn't stop for doubts, couldn't stop for anything. She couldn't consider the 'what if' or 'what next' scenarios flitting through her mind. Tears pricked at her eyes and her thick boots slammed against the road. If she stopped, she would never be able to start forward again; she would never fulfill her promise.

Sam turned a corner and reached a wide street, a cream-colored apartment building squatted next to her on the corner while, on its roof, a flashy billboard perversely advertised another embarrassment of consumerism. They looked familiar. Sam placed them after a minute. She had noticed them a short distance from where Danny had fallen.

Her feet moved forward of their own accord, padding up the road as the rest of her trailed along behind. She caught the urgency like a sudden cold and began jogging faster up the street, looking for signs of she-didn't-know-what. People chatted in clusters on the sidewalks, making quick, excited motions with their hands, imitating the paths of the planes. Their heads bobbed up every so often to gape at the sky before returning to their conversations.

Idiots.

Sam glared at them before turning to look ahead. Activity burbled farther up the street: more people, these arguing and shoving at one another. They swarmed around a gray apartment building, piles of useless belongings lying scattered about the road. As she watched, more people emerged with loads of possessions, and looking closely, Sam saw that the building was split with hairline cracks near the roof and lower floors.

She rushed up its rude concrete steps and pushed the door open, shoving some poor slob aside in the process and scattering his precious junk across the floor. He yelled at her, and Sam mumbled an apology before stumbling down the apartment hallway, past a staircase, eyes darting frantically through the apartment.

It was dark. A dusky light glowed from the hallway's low ceiling up ahead, and Sam stepped forward, moving beneath it for a better look. The light was coming through a hole torn in the ceiling. Sam's mouth parted as she craned her head, trying to see into it.

Her foot slipped. Sam gasped, arms pinwheeling; she managed to fall back against the wall instead of forward into the gaping hole in the floor. The hole in the ceiling, she saw, continued down to bite into walls on either side of the hallway, plaster and wood and insulation all shredded like cloth at its edges as the hole continued down into the basement, forming a vertical tunnel through the building which passed through the roof and every floor to reach down to the concrete foundation below. Splintered boards from the torn-through floors hung over the hole; dust and specks of carpet and wood drifted down continuously, creating a fog in the silver light from the sky above. Live wires hung down from higher levels, their thick black forms jerking and twisting at intervals while broken plumbing dripped fat drops or poured steady streams of water down into the basement.

Sam couldn't tear her eyes away. The shattered boards, the broken pipes and the sparking wires—something had broken through all that. She swayed and jerked herself back from it, holding with juvenile tenacity to the fact that she had a promise to fulfill. She sank to the floor and glanced again at the hole in the hallway, its ragged mouth gaping at the sky. On her hands and knees, Sam crawled toward it, lips trembling, and peered in.

Green. She could see green. Chunks of concrete, more pipes and wires and boards, some wet earth, the whole mess scattered helter-skelter about the basement and covered in a misty green glow. She squinted into the darkness, seeing something white under the rubble… Maybe the white sleeve of a shirt?

_No,_ Sam mouthed. Her breath had gone. She took it back and said it again, louder. He couldn't be dead. Heroes were not buried alive under piles of apartment debris.

Sam shoved to her feet, wobbling as her knees threatened to buckle. She had to get down there. Stairs. Where were the stairs.

She whirled back up the hallway and into the narrow staircase, clattering down the metal steps and bursting into the basement, dank and dark save for the mingled green and white light coming from the hole.

Sam hurried forward and began tearing off the garbage, moving not thinking, her hands splitting with small cuts as she hauled away what scrap she could. Gradually, the white sleeve grew an arm, a chest, a neck, a face. Dirt and damp spattered Sam's clothes, the cold pricked her arms and legs as groundwater sank in. She stopped, her breathing quick and erratic, realizing there was no more to be thrown away.

Danny lay motionless before her. He was in the same old blue jeans and white t-shirt he had worn every day since they'd met, when Sam had heard, for the first time, something other than judgment from the mouth of a peer. Now his body glimmered with the transparency of a dirty window. His eyes, once a vivacious blue, were closed with preternatural stillness. A haze of green static surrounded him, dissipating, as she watched, into the light of the sky above. Unbled, unbruised, and unhurt, Danny's entire body lay still, legs sprawled as the rubble allowed, arms fallen slack at his sides. His expression was toneless, soft cheeks and parted lips frozen of any past or present emotion.

Sam's shoulders began to shake. She brought her hands up to her chest and let them drop down again, knuckles scraping on concrete. It couldn't be… She was here now, and it was impossible that she should be too late. "I'm here, Danny." She bit her lip and touched his shoulder. Her hand met only slight resistance as it passed through him. Sam recalled her trembling hand, resting it against her thigh. "I'm here, just like I said I would be."

Whether she couldn't grasp it or she wouldn't gasp it, Sam didn't know, but the sobs shook her and she cried up at the sky, a feeling like fire in her chest, an ache like a wound in her head.

Her voice was broken. "I would have died for you." She glared up at the too-bright sky. "I would have died for him…"

Her heart broke down in her chest. Sam rocked back on her heels, stumbling against the rubble behind her, supporting herself on limp arms as she cried, and cried, and cried. Danny was dead. He had always been there for her, supporting and accepting and encouraging. Now, Danny was dead. He had saved her from a dozen different ghosts and had come to love her over time. Danny was dead. He'd saved the town and everybody in it, not only this time, but time and time again, going out there and proving his belief that there were things worth saving… But Danny was dead. Danny was dead. Danny was dead.

Frustration and anger and hopelessness, shattered heart and stolen breath. She felt a pang of nauseousness and a shaking weakness in her muscles; her mind reeled at light speed. She could catch her breath, she couldn't hold her exploding heart. It wasn't possible; it just couldn't be possible, but wherever she looked—

Danny was dead, his hopeful tanned face broken, transformed to a passionless void.

She shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes. She leaned forward on her knees and took his body in her arms. She cradled his head on her shoulder, rocking on her heels, breath still racing from her. One phrase passed her lips, broken by a sob, confessed in despair.

"I love you."

A short sting struck her, and something impossible happened. Sam dropped him and scrambled away. She was losing her mind. She'd gone completely insane, and she was obviously in severe shock. Either that, or she had felt warm breath against her neck.

Danny sputtered as she dropped him, coughing twice. Sam swept her hands to her mouth, scrambling to her feet. Danny's nose wrinkled as he coughed, lying on his side and looking slightly less transparent. He sat up on his elbows and shook his head, dust from the building showering from his raven hair. Every bit of him was alive again, not a trace of the ethereal stillness remaining. Sam backed away, not taking her eyes off him.

Danny blinked away confusion, starting at the darkness and the sharp debris surrounding him. He squinted up at the light sky before glancing out into the darkness, bright eyes widening as they landed squarely on Sam, who hoped he wouldn't notice that she was scared out of her wits. He stared at her for a minute, blue eyes shining, captivating her own.

A soft smile broke out on his face. His eyes shifted over her features, returning to her face, one eyebrow rising slightly. "Sam?"

She gulped and nodded.

The smile transformed into an ear-to-ear grin. "I knew it!" He struggled to stand up. "I knew you'd—Ah!" He groaned and slipped back into the debris, muddy puddles sloshing under him as he fell. That was enough proof of life for Sam. If she was crazy, so be it, but she couldn't stand away any longer. She clambered back over the debris and kneeled beside him.

Danny wasn't dead, but he didn't exactly look healthy. His shallow breathing and delirious eyes renewed Sam's fears. Whatever had been ignited in him was fading fast. Her hands flitted unconsciously at her sides, searching for something to help him, anything to keep him in _this_ reality…

Sam stopped. Danny's eyes, fading though they were, had fixed themselves once again in her own. He gathered his breath and spoke, the softness of his voice approaching a whisper. "Sam, your eyes… They're violet."

She fell to her knees next to him. "They've always been that way…" Fear seized her once more. Was he losing his memory now?

Danny shook his head. "No. They're glowing… violet."

Sam paused, her frantic motions stilled. That shouldn't be possible for any number of reasons. She wasn't a ghost, and she didn't have any powers. The green haze still held around them, the residue of Danny's efforts. That shouldn't happen either. Plasma should dissipate quickly, unless he hadn't been using plasma. Unless he had been using something else, something that Sam herself might very well possess. She looked down at Danny, watching him teeter on the knife's edge of life and death. "I told you I was going to be there for you, Danny." He stared up at her, confused, almost gone. She leaned close over him, a wet tear dropping from her eye to his cheek. "And here I am." Sam closed the distance and kissed him on the lips, willing whatever power she had in her, to him.

Danny's body flexed straight under her; he shuddered slightly and his limbs flexed straight. Sam held onto him, something strange and exhilarating draining away from her to him, weakening her each moment. She was happy for the chance, the wonderful fact that she hadn't been too late after all. Sam had said that she'd die for him, and she'd meant it. God as her witness, she'd meant it.

The power drained and drained, and just when she thought she was going away, losing herself to that place that had nearly claimed Danny, she felt his lips, once weak and still, pressing back against hers. The power drain changed. Sam felt something inside her turn inside-out, pain to joy, loss to gain, and the drain on her life became a fountain of it. Danny took Sam in his arms and kissed her back hard.

They sat up together, Danny's living blue eyes filled with victory and love. "I knew you'd be here."

Sam smiled, nothing left in her but happiness.

Sam caught him in a hug, her head on his shoulder, letting her distress melt in the comfort of Danny's living arms. She sighed as he held her, his hands touching just below her shoulder blades, the slight shudder in his chest and tight embrace of his arms telling Sam that he was every bit as grateful as she.

The light of the sky played through the dust to blanket their shoulders with a warm haze while the dampness of the earth squooshed at their feet.Outside, a soft wind blew and a quiet murmur of voices made itself heard against the dripping water and soft groans of the damaged apartment. People, safe if not satisfied, scuffed their feet on the tar as they paced the street. Animals barked or mrowed for attention, but never at length; people found reassurance on the crowns of their pets. Boxes scraped out of the way as the low, windy hums of gas cars approached and receded, and cushions sighed now and then as evicted apartment-dwellers employed them as chairs on the hard sidewalk.

Every sound of the world's restored normalcy crept though the basement window. The clatter slinked along the floor and through the muck, making its way to the ears of its two saviors, instilling both with comfort and contentment.

A call reached them. "Danny?"

"Is that Tucker?" Danny tilted his head towards the noise.

Sam kissed his cheek before letting Danny go to the window. "Sounds like it."

"It is Tucker!" Danny laughed, jumping over piles of debris to reach the stairs. Sam hesitated, hurried after him and touched his arm. Danny stopped and looked back at her, the dim light playing on the dampness of his clothes, glimmering on his muddy jeans. "What is it?"

Sam licked her lips. "Danny… before we go up, I want you to know—" She paused, faltering. How to express an emotion that defies definition? Sam stammered for a moment before cracking an apologetic smile. "I'm really glad you're back."

Danny looked up at her, returning her smile in full. "Sam." He clasped her hands in his own, sincerity in their warmth and gentle pressure. Danny shook his head, eyes speaking volumes that words never could. "I'm glad, too." Sam squeezed him in one more hug, feeling, for the first time in a short eternity, that everything was going to be alright.

From outside, Tucker called.

"Come on." Danny tugged her into the stairwell after him. "Let's go see Tucker!" The two of them clattered up the metal stairs and burst, smiling, into the sunlight.


End file.
